MILTON, England – In Paul Oldham's bathroom is a cartoon that sums up his attitude toward the role of television in modern life. It shows a couple slumped together in their living room, staring at a beaten-up old supermarket carton. The caption reads: "Let's stay in and watch the box tonight."

Oldham, a 44-year-old Web site designer, is not now and never plans to be a member of the television-owning public, having given it up in exasperation when "Inspector Morse" went into reruns. But for more than a decade he has been enmeshed in a bizarre pas de deux with the agency that polices TV ownership in Britain and seems intent on proving him a liar.

No matter how much Oldham protests, he said, stern letters come inexorably in the mail, informing him (in case he has forgotten) that he has not paid the 121 pound ($233) BBC license fee required annually of every owner of a "telly." If indeed he is found to be harboring a television illegally, they remind him, he could be fined 1,000 pounds ($1,923) or wind up in jail.

"They really are quite odious letters," Oldham said. "They work on the assumption that you are a criminal."

Each time, Oldham writes back to declare that he has no TV. But in its most recent notice, the agency told him that he should be prepared to prove it to the enforcement division, whose officers planned to drop by for a little TV-hunting expedition at his house.

While not commenting on Oldham's case, Chris Reed, a spokesman for the agency, TV Licensing, outlined its general policy.

"We wish we could believe everyone who tells us they have no TV," he said. "But unfortunately, last year just under half the people who claimed not to have one were found to be using one, and therefore needed a license, when we checked the premises."

License fees date from the 1920s, when the British Broadcasting Corp. charged its first customers 50 pence a year for the privilege of owning a radio.

The fee is very much a part of British life. It is a criminal offense for anyone with a television set not to pay it, whether they watch the BBC or not. Fee-evasion cases make up 12 percent of the caseload in magistrates' courts. Although most evaders are fined, 20 people were imprisoned for nonpayment last year.

The BBC took in 3.9 billion pounds ($7.5 billion) from the fee in 1993, but 5.7 percent of television owners still failed to pay. TV Licensing regularly carries out campaigns to warn them about the consequences of inaction that say, for instance, "Get one or get done" – "getting done" being slang for getting caught.

Enforcement officers visit homes and businesses about 3 million times a year. They have a variety of weapons at hand, including a law that requires retailers to notify the government whenever someone buys a television; a database with TV-owning information about 28 million Britons; and specially equipped vans and hand-held devices that can detect unlawful television-watching.

The final step is a home visit, whose purpose, Reed said, is "to identify genuine non-users of television so that we can minimize future contact with them." Homeowners are not obliged to let the agents in, but the agents can get search warrants if there is sufficient evidence of television viewing. Every day, more than 1,000 people – 380,000 in 2003 – are caught watching television without a license.